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New Testament scholar Johannes Beutler brings together a lifetime of study and reflection in this acclaimed commentary, first published in German in 2013 and now available to English-speaking audiences for the first time. Moving through the Gospel of John with a careful and critical eye, Beutler engages the relevant primary and secondary sources; summarizes the existing discussion; and presents syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic analyses of the text. As he meticulously examines the Fourth Gospel, Beutler pays special attention to the influence of Old Testament and Early Jewish traditions, to the overall structure of the Gospel of John, and to evidence suggesting a later stratum of contextualized "re-readings" in the composition of the Gospel. Bold, literary, and theological, this volume represents a landmark work of German biblical scholarship.
In this study, the First Farewell Discourse of Jesus (Jn 14) is read in the light of the Old Testament and Early Judaism. At the beginning of the chapter, influence of Psalm 42/43 can be shown. In the central part of the chapter, the subjects of loving God / Jesus and keeping the commandments seem to go back to Deuteronomic covenant theology. In the final part, prophetic announcements of eschatological salvation are echoed. Thus, Jn 14 makes use of the three parts of the Hebrew Bible: the Law, the Prophets and the Writings. This is important for Jewish-Christian dialogue. The English edition of this book is based on the German original of 1984. In a Postscript the contributions on the chapter since the first publication are reviewed, and an additional bibliography has been added.
In Theology, Empowerment, and Prison Ministry Meins G.S. Coetsier offers a new account of Karl Rahner’s theological anthropology and the prison pastorate with a contemporary expansion for meaning, seeking an antidote to the suffering of those incarcerated with a “theology of empowerment.”
In Jesus the Samaritan: Ethnic Labeling in the Gospel of John, Stewart Penwell examines how ethnic labels function in the Gospel of John. After a review of the discourse history between “the Jews” and “the Samaritans,” the dual ethnic labeling in John 4:9 and 8:48 are examined and, in each instance, members from “the Jews” and “the Samaritans” label Jesus as a member of each other’s group for deviating from what were deemed acceptable practices as a member of “the Jews.” The intra-textual links between John 4 and 8 reveal that the function of Jesus’s dual ethnic labeling is to establish a new pattern of practices and categories for the “children of God” (1:12; 11:52) who are a trans-ethnic group united in fictive kinship and embedded within the Judean ethnic group’s culture and traditions.
Recognized as an innovative interpreter of the Gospel of John, for decades Francis J. Moloney has approached the sacred literature in a way that attends both to the details of the text and to the several contexts that gave life to the original story. This “text and context” approach continues to enrich the reading and interpretation of the Gospel in today’s world. Gospel of John: Text and Context gathers Francis Moloney’s key studies on John’s Gospel written over the course of his career. The three sections of the work comprise studies of Johannine history, theology, and research; exegetical studies ranging across all parts of the Johannine narrative; and an exploration of how the Fourth Gospel came to be understood as sacred Scripture.
Written in a conversational and reflective tone, the articles offer an excellent overview of major issues in the study of the Fourth Gospel and 1-2-3 John.
Every aspect of the study of John is represented in this book, including the historical origins of the Johannine community, the religious traditions in the gospel within and beyond early Christianity, the Fourth Gospel's literary dimensions and theological concerns, and the distinctive challenges presented by the Gospel's interpretation.
Reconsidering Johannine Christianity presents a full-scale application of social identity approach to the Johannine writings. This book reconsiders a widely held scholarly assumption that the writings commonly taken to represent Johannine Christianity – the Gospel of John and the First, Second and Third Epistles of John – reflect the situation of an introverted early Christian group. It claims that dualistic polarities appearing in these texts should be taken as attempts to construct a secure social identity, not as evidence of social isolation. While some scholars (most notably, Richard Bauckham) have argued that the New Testament gospels were not addressed to specific early Christian communities but to all Christians, this book proposes that we should take different branches of early Christianity, not as localized and closed groups, but as imagined communities that envision distinct early Christian identities. It also reassesses the scholarly consensus according to which the Johannine Epistles presuppose and build upon the finished version of the Fourth Gospel and argues that the Johannine tradition, already in its initial stages, was diverse.
This work sketches the many portraits of the Pharisees that emerge from ancient sources. Based upon the Gospels, the writings of Paul, Josephus, the Mishnah, the Tosefta, and archeology, the volume profiles the Pharisees and explores the relationship between the Pharisees and the Judaic religious system foreshadowed by the library of Qumran. A great virtue of this study is that no attempt is made to homogenize the distinct pictures or reconstruct a singular account of the Pharisees; instead, by carefully considering the sources, the chapters allow different pictures of the Pharisees to stand side by side.
The voice of Francis J. Moloney has been heard in Johannine studies for many decades. This volume gathers shorter journal articles from a publishing career that began in 1975, placing them together with new studies that appear for this first time, and thus complementing Moloney's already well-known commentary and scholarly monographs on the Fourth Gospel. The author's work has encompassed all areas of Johannine scholarship - the world that produced and first received the Fourth Gospel, its theology and Christology, and critical analysis of much-discussed passages. Well known for his extensive use of narrative and reader-response criticism, Francis J. Moloney has in more recent years developed an interpretation of the gospel which suggests that the author(s) of this narrative regarded their work as the "completion" of scripture. This unique collection therefore not only provides the past publications of a significant Johannine scholar, but also reflects the development of Johannine scholarship from 1975 until today.